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How socialists of Lenin’s time responded to colonialism

[This text was first presented at the Ideas Left Out conference on Elbow Lake, Ontario, August 2, 2014.]

December 14, 2014 -- Johnriddell.wordpress.com, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- As the 19th century neared
its close, revolutionary socialists were hostile to the world’s imperial
powers and to their colonial empires, which then encircled the globe.
They foresaw the overthrow of colonialism as a by-product of socialist
revolution in the industrialised capitalist countries.

They had little knowledge, however, of the anti-colonial freedom
movements that began to emerge at that time. It was not until the
Russian Revolution of 1917 that an alliance was forged between
revolutionary socialism and the colonial freedom movement.

This article aims to give a quick sketch of how this process took place,
focusing on the congresses of the world socialist movement.[1]

As the international socialist movement took shape in the late 1800s
and up to 1914, it consisted principally of parties in Europe and the
European settler nations of North America, Australia and New Zealand.
The rest of the world was made up mainly of colonies, like British India
or Indonesia, or semi-colonies, that is, nominally independent
countries under imperialist domination, like China or Iran.

In 1889, workers’ parties of many countries joined to form the
Socialist International. It was critical of colonialism, but some of its
leaders held out hope that colonialism could be reformed. Its 1904 world
congress was ambiguous on this point.

A reformed colonialism?

At the next world congress, in Stuttgart in 1907, delegates favouring a
reformed colonialism came very close to winning a majority. A
commission on colonialism voted that under socialism, colonies could be a
force for civilisation.

Eduard David, a leader of the German Socialist Party, was more blunt:
“Europe needs colonies”, he said. “It does not have enough of them.
Without them, we would be economically like China.”

A minority draft advanced by Karl Kautsky flatly opposed every form
of colonialism. Colonial policy “destroys the wealth” of colonised
countries, while “enslaving and impoverishing the native peoples as well
as waging murderous and devastating wars.”[2]

Schoolchildren, Dutch East Indies, photo by Hendrick Van Kol.

In the discussion, racist views were on full display. Hendrick Van
Kol, who owned a plantation in Java and until then had been the
International’s most prominent spokesperson on colonial issues, ridiculed
the idea of approaching colonial subjects in friendship. “Suppose we
bring a machine to the savages of central Africa”, he said. “What will
they do with it? Perhaps they will start up a war dance around it. (Loud laughter) … Perhaps they will kill us or even eat us...” And a good deal more in that vein.

The congress defeated the pro-colonial motion by a narrow margin, 128
votes to 108. In Lenin’s view, the closeness of the vote reflected the
fact that colonising countries were sustained not merely by the labour
of proletarians within their borders but by that of “enslaved natives in
the colonies”. This provides a material basis “for infecting the
proletariat with colonial chauvinism”, he wrote.

Another debate in the Stuttgart congress affirmed, over some
opposition, the right of peoples of colour to immigrate into the
countries of advanced capitalism with full and equal civil rights.

Uprisings in the colonial world

In the years that followed, socialists discussed the great uprisings
of colonised peoples in Iran and China, the desperate resistance of
African blacks, and a democratic revolution in Turkey.

The revolutionary wing of socialism continued to hammer on the need
to oppose colonialism in every form and support colonial liberation
struggles. Lenin’s 1913 article, “Backward Europe and Advanced Asia”,
pointed to colonial peoples as a vanguard force in the global struggle
for socialism. “Everywhere in Asia … hundreds of millions of people are
awakening to life, light, and freedom,” while “advanced” Europe is
“plundering China and helping the foes of democracy”, he wrote.[3]

Impact of World War I

World War I broke out 100 years ago. Most
socialist parties rallied to support their rulers and the war effort. A
revolutionary minority remained true to the Second International’s previous
pledge to oppose such an imperialist war. Anti-war socialists often
explained that they would unconditionally support a war of the colonial
slaves against their European masters, but the world war was a contest
among the slaveholders over dividing up the colonial slaves, in which
socialists could not support either side.

Among their demands was
“immediate liberation of the colonies”. Lenin called for support to
revolutionary movements for national liberation, even if they were not
socialist in character. But many of Lenin’s allies did not support
struggles for national self-determination; for example, Karl Radek and
Leon Trotsky dismissed the 1916 Irish uprising against British rule.[4]

Revolution in Russia

When the Russian workers and peasants established a government in
1917, one of its first actions was to proclaim the right of all subject
peoples in the old tsarist empire to self-determination, including
independence. Another early Soviet appeal pledged to Muslim workers and
farmers that “henceforth your beliefs and customs, your national and
cultural institutions are declared free and inviolable”. They were
called on to “build your national life freely and without hindrance.”[5]
These peoples were indigenous, in the sense that much of their land had
been seized and their culture devastated by settler colonialism.
Treaties through which tsarism had lorded it over and looted the Eastern
peoples were now declared null and void.

These actions had a great impact among freedom fighters in the
colonies. Among colonised peoples in the old tsarist empire, hundreds of
thousands joined the Red Army. Although based in Soviet Russia, it was
constituted as an international force fighting for liberation of all
subject peoples. Soon there were 300,000 Muslims in its ranks and 50,000
Chinese workers. This reality provoked alarm among pro-imperialist
forces across Europe. Russia was then viewed, even by socialists, as an
outpost of “Asiatic backwardness”. Now, the rightists feared, the
despised "Asiatic hordes" were about to be unleashed on Europe.

Support to national revolution

In March 1919, the Communist International was founded in Moscow.
Russia was then blockaded by the imperialist powers, so the gathering
was small. Delegates condemned the victors in the World War for having
maintained their grip on the colonies. The congress’s manifesto
declared, “Colonial slaves of Africa and Asia: the hour of proletarian
dictatorship will also be the hour of your liberation.” This solemn
pledge won widespread attention in the colonial world.[6]

Sixteen months later, a much broader Communist congress convened in
Moscow, with representation from six Asian countries outside the former
tsarist realm. The Red Army had now driven colonialist forces from most
of Central Asia. Two days of the congress were devoted to the colonial
question; theses were introduced by Lenin and a delegate from India,
M.N. Roy. The two held detailed discussions before the congress; both
modified their theses; and both texts were adopted. Their spirit is
captured by Lenin’s endorsement of a modification of a famous slogan by
Marx and Engels: “Workers of the world and oppressed peoples, unite.”[7]

Lenin’s report on this item contained a passage that is occasionally
questioned by some socialists today. He held that the Communist
International must support “national-revolutionary” movements in the
colonies, even if their leadership is bourgeois, provided they are
genuinely revolutionary and do not obstruct educating the masses in a
revolutionary spirit. This approach was then codified in the conditions
for membership in the Communist International: Member parties must “support every
liberation movement in the colonies not only in words but in deeds”.

The congress theses were put into action in September 1920 at a
gathering of close to 2000 participants representing 25 Asian peoples,
the First Congress of the Peoples of the East, held in Baku, in
Azerbaijan. Almost half were non-communists. Many were Muslims newly won
to revolutionary ideas.

The congress made a celebrated call for a jihad against imperialist
Britain, which had occupied much of the region, to be waged by the
peoples of the east and workers around the world. It was the occasion
for an early debate on Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine, which
the Communist movement strongly opposed. Russian settler colonialism in
Central Asia also came up for sharp criticism.

Combating chauvinist abuses in Soviet Russia

The revolution in this region had been spearheaded by Russian workers
who formed part of the settler minority in Turkestan. From early 1918,
the Soviet regime, cut off from the government in Moscow, followed a
blatantly chauvinist course, “persecuting the indigenous population in a
most brutal manner”, as the Russian Communist Party later noted.[8]
For example, indigenous people were excluded from Soviets, the agencies
of government. In late 1919, the local soviets reversed course, but
abuses continued. Twenty delegates submitted a protest to the Baku
congress, which pledged action and sent a delegation to meet with the
government in Moscow.

Corrective action followed, and it went very far. To take just one example, local sharia
law was incorporated into the Soviet judicial system. This helped
provoke a round of alarm in Western Europe about the triumph in Russia
of Asiatic superstition. But this is a topic for a separate
presentation. (See “Nationality’s Role in Social Liberation”.)

The next world congress, held in mid-1921, focused narrowly on an
internal crisis provoked by conflicts in Germany. The colonial
discussion was well prepared, with three draft resolutions, but no time
was available for discussion. Instead, a session was devoted to
education aimed at workers outside the congress. Many speeches were not
translated for delegates. M.N. Roy complained that the procedure was
“purely opportunistic”. A French delegate objected that “the main role
has been played by cinematography”.[9]

Lenin’s last world congress

When the Fourth Congress convened in late 1922, delegates were
present from nine non-Soviet countries of Asia, three countries in
Africa and five in Latin America. Two days were spent on the colonial
question, and a resolution was adopted.[10]
Even so, there were again protests, this time by 14 delegations, that
this issue did not receive due attention. Several developments at this
congress are worth noting:

Delegates from Indonesia and Algeria won agreement that the movement
for Islamic anti-colonial unity, then called “pan-Islamism”, could play
a progressive role in early stages of a liberation struggle.

The congress heard Black Communists from the US and adopted a resolution on worldwide Black liberation.

Adopting a proposal by M.N. Roy, the congress called for an
anti-imperialist united front, to “organise all the available
revolutionary forces against imperialism”.

The congress sharply condemned the failure of French Communists in
Algeria to advocate national independence, reiterating that active
support for liberation struggles was a condition of membership.

Less positively, the congress resolution on South Africa did not
take up the fact that the general strike in Transvaal in March 1922 had
been waged, in part, in defence of the colour bar against Black workers.

The congress failed to fully discuss what was then perhaps the most
urgent issue in the field of anti-imperialist struggle. The Chinese
Communists had decided to support and join a bourgeois-led liberation
movement, the Kuomintang, while continuing independent Communist
educational and party-building work. This crucial decision barely
mentioned at the congress, probably because of the delayed arrival of
the Comintern representative in China. The omission was unfortunate.
After the congress, the Chinese party downgraded independent work,
creating conditions for the revolution’s disastrous defeat in 1927. But
that story belongs to a discussion on the rise of Stalinism in the
International.

The Fourth Congress is the last held under the leadership of Lenin
and the leadership team around him. In the Stalinist period that
followed, the policies of unconditional support of colonial liberation
and an anti-imperialist united front were not carried forward.

Socialist policy on colonialism in Lenin`s time should be seen as a
learning process. Some issues were not fully thought through, as in
China. Relics of Eurocentric attitudes still lingered. The questions of
indigeneity and settler colonialism were not addressed, other than in
Central Asia and to some degree in Palestine. Even so, the
anti-colonialism of the Communist movement at that time was a great
advance.

Only several years after Lenin’s death, in 1928, did the Communist
movement came to grips with indigeneity, and this happened not in the
Soviet Union but in Latin America. The most advanced expression of this
engagement is found in the works of José Carlos Mariátegui.[11]

What does this heritage mean for us today? After 1945, the colonial
empires of Lenin’s time passed away, to be replaced by new forms of
imperial domination. Colonies became semi-colonies; domination became
indirect. Semi-colonies evolved in different directions, and a few –
especially China – became manufacturing powerhouses. But during the last
three decades, the era of capitalist “globalisation” and neoliberalism,
the limited sovereignty achieved by semi-colonies has been radically
reduced. Even the weaker imperialist powers have been affected, as in
Greece.

Resurgent social struggles in such dependent countries usually aim
first at restoring a measure of democratic control of the national
government. In some cases, gains in that process have then been utilised
in an effort to reassert sovereignty and regain some of the social
achievements lost through neoliberalism. There are elements of national
liberation in such a process, in which ideas from the anti-colonial
struggles of old can have relevance in a new context.

[9]. See session 23 in Riddell, ed., To the Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, scheduled for publication by Brill, 2015. Quotations are from pp. 1018 and 1030 in the German edition of 1921, Protokoll des III Kongresses.